Some more good news today out of North Carolina courtesy of Morning Consult’s latest poll:
As North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis faces former state Sen. Cal Cunningham (D) in a tough re-election race, polling shows the Republican incumbent underperforming President Donald Trump’s standing in the battleground state, indicating a missing piece of the coalition he’ll need to win re-election in November: unity in his party’s base.
It’s a gap his Democratic rival is planning to use to his advantage as he seeks to unseat one of the Senate’s most vulnerable incumbents in a race that could tip control of the chamber.
There are a lot of Trump voters that I’m hearing from that are going to split tickets,” Cunningham said in an Aug. 20 interview with Morning Consult. Tillis, Cunningham said, “has found a way to alienate much of the electorate here, and I’m actively seeking support — including in unlikely constituencies and unlikely places.”
Cunningham has an opening, according to the latest Morning Consult polling of 1,541 likely North Carolina voters conducted Aug. 14-23. Tillis trails his Democratic rival by 8 percentage points, 47 percent to 39 percent, in a state where former Vice President Joe Biden holds a narrow 49 percent to 46 percent lead over Trump. Compared with the president’s standing, Republican voters and those who voted for Trump in 2016 are both 15 points less likely to say they’ll vote for Tillis in November. The poll has a 2-point margin of error.
Morning Consult also polled the Presidential race in North Carolina:
As President Donald Trump looks to reboot his campaign with the Republican National Convention, new Morning Consult polling shows him trailing his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, both nationwide and in North Carolina, a pivotal swing state and the site of the scaled-down party gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden leads Trump by 10 percentage points nationally, 52 percent to 42 percent, according to surveys of 13,272 likely voters conducted Aug. 21-23 following the conclusion of the largely virtual Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee. The national poll had a 1-point margin of error.
While the margin is not a significant improvement on where Biden stood heading into last week’s gathering, it nonetheless leaves the Democratic Party in a much stronger position than its standing coming out of its Philadelphia confab four years ago, when Hillary Clinton led then-candidate Trump by just 3 points, 43 percent to 40 percent.
And in addition to Biden’s 10-point advantage among likely voters — which ties a Morning Consult high — the latest national polling also finds a record-high 51 percent of likely voters with a favorable view of him over the past three days, compared with a record-low unfavorability rating of 46 percent. Trump, by comparison, begins his own party’s renominating shindig 12 points underwater, with 43 percent of likely voters viewing him favorably nationwide and 55 percent taking the opposite view.
Things look a little better for the president in North Carolina, where responses collected Aug. 14-23 among 1,541 likely voters in the state show him trailing Biden by 3 points, 49 percent to 46 percent, just inside the poll’s 2-point margin of error. Biden’s slim edge in the Tar Heel State is driven partly by his superior standing with moderates, who are backing the Delawarean by a 41-point margin.
Let’s keep up the momentum and flip North Carolina Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Cunningham, Cooper, Biden and their fellow North Carolina Democrats campaigns:
North Carolina:
Yvonne Lewis Holley for Lt. Governor
Josh Stein for Attorney General
